From WHITE NOISE by Don Delillo.
“This is the big new worry,” he said. “Forget spills, fallouts, leakages. It’s the things right around you in your own house that’ll get you sooner or later. It’s the electrical and magnetic fields. Who in this room would believe me if I said that the suicide rate hits an all-time record among people who live near high-voltage power lines? What makes these people so sad and depressed? Just the sight of ugly wires and utility poles? Or does something happen to their brain cells from being exposed to consant rays?” …
“Forget headeaches and fatigue,” he said as he chewed. “What about nerve disorders, strange and violent behavior in the home? There are scientific findings. Where do you think all the deformed babies are coming from? Radio and TV, that’s where.”
The girls looked at him admiringly. I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to ask him why I should believe these scientific findings but not the results that indicated we were safe from Nyodene contamination. But what could I say, considering my condition? I wanted to tell him that statistical evidence of the kind he was quoting from was by nature inconclusive and misleading. I wanted to say that he would learn to regard all such catastrophic findings with equanimity as he matured, grew out of his confining literalism, developed a spirit of informed and skeptical inquiry, advanced in wisdom and rounded judgement, got old, declined, died.
But I only said, “Terrifying data is now an industry in itself. Different firms compete to see how badly they can scare us.”
“I’ve got news for you,” he said. “The brain of a white rat releases calcium ions when it’s exposed to radio-frequency waves. Does anyone at this table know what that means?”
Denise looked at her mother.
“Is this what they teach in school today?” Babette said. “What happened to civics, how a bill becomes a law? The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides. I still remember my theorems. The battle of Bunker Hill was really fought on Breed’s Hill. Here’s one. Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.”
“Was it the Monitor or the Merrimac that got sunk?” I said.
“I don’t know but it was Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”
“What was that?” Steffie said.
“I want to say he was an Indian running for office. Here’s one. Who invented the mechanical reaper and how did it change the face of American agriculture?”
“I’m trying to remember the three kinds of rock,” I said. “Igneous, sedimentary and something else.”
“What about your logarithms? What about the causes of the economic discontent leading up to the Great Crash? Here’s one. Who won the Lincoln-Douglas debates? Careful. It’s not as obvious as it seems.”
“Anthracite and bituminous,” I said. “Isosceles and scalene.”
The mysterious words came back to me in a rush of confused schoolroom images.
